Television is one of the most influential forces of our time. Through a television set, a person is able to receive news, sports, entertainment, information and commercials. The average person spends between two and five hours a day viewing a television set. With the addition of cable and satellite, a person can now watch television programming is essentially available every hour of the day. The increase in the availability of television stations also allows the option to choose the type of program.
Still, because of busy schedules or a programming conflict, a person may not be able to view all of the programs desired. To manage television viewing, a person will often record a desired program in order to view it at another time. Additionally, a person may want to record a program and view it at their convenience with the option of fast forwarding through or skipping over undesired portions of the program. For example, a person may record a television show and then fast forward through commercials when viewing. Another person may record a sports event and then fast forward through timeouts or slow play. Still, other people may record programs and view them to allow for the option of skipping through undesirable or objectional scenes.
To achieve the above television viewing, however, a person must program their video recorder, such as a Video Cassette Recorder (VCR), to record the desired event. This nevertheless, can be time consuming. Additionally, a person may forget or is unexpectedly away from their home when the desired program appears on television and is, therefore, unable to program their VCR.
Other problems may also develop when programming a VCR. For instance, a power outage may occur after a VCR has been successfully programmed. Additionally, scheduling changes may result in a recording of an undesired program. Also, if a program is recorded correctly, a person must still fast forward through commercials or other portions that they find objectional when viewing the program.
Several products have been developed to assist people in recording and replaying television programs. For instance, VCR Plus has made programming a VCR a much simpler task. There are also devices that allow a person to view a recorded program without commercials. These can be seen in U.S. Pat. No. 6,275,646, entitled “Image Recording/Reproducing Apparatus,” to Tada, et al., issued Aug. 14, 2001; U.S. Pat. No. 6,002,831, entitled “Image Recording/Reproducing Apparatus,” to Tada, et al., issued Dec. 14, 1999; U.S. Pat. No. 6,226,444, entitled “Method and Apparatus for Recording Program Data Without Commercials,” to Goldschmidt Iki, et al., issued May 1, 2001; U.S. Pat. No. 5,987,210 entitled “Method and Apparatus for Eliminating Television Commercial Messages,” to Iggulden, et al., issued Nov. 16, 1999; and U.S. Pat. No. 5,692,093, entitled “Method and Apparatus for Eliminating Television Commercial Messages,” to Iggulden, et al., issued Nov. 25, 1997, which are herein incorporated by reference. Another development has allowed people to have a continuous recording track that can be accessed by separate read and write facilities. This device enables people to have VCR-like program control features while still recording the program. This is demonstrated in U.S. Pat. No. 5,701,383, entitled “Video Time-Shifting Apparatus,” to Russo, et al. (Russo), issued Dec. 23, 1997, which is also herein incorporated by reference.
Additionally, there are several filtering devices available that allow a user to view a program without objectional language. Recent developments also allow a user to view a program at a certain rating. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,181,364, entitled “System for Filtering Content from Videos,” to Ford, issued Jan. 30, 2001 filters content at a certain rating and replaces that portion with content of a desired rating.
While these advances in recording have given more flexibility to viewers, there are still some limitations. For instance, even though there are some devices to assist a person in programming a VCR, a person still must program it to record the desired program. A person may want to skip more than just commercials or objectional scenes. Also, a person may record a sporting event and, in addition to commercials, fast forward through time outs or slow action of the event. In addition, a parent may want a desired program for viewing by their entire family but a filtered version of the program is not available. Finally, advertisers may object to video productions being reproduced without the commercials.
Accordingly, what is needed in the art is a service that can deliver a version (e.g., an edited version) of a selected video presentation based on a request of a viewer.